At present, the surfaces of electrical insulators used in electric systems may become seriously begrimed. Accordingly, after a period of time such insulators must be cleaned. Conventional methods used to clean electrical insulators are by manual cleaning, or by machines or by rinsing with electrified (ionized) water. However, cleaning by manual effort and by machine takes unnecessary time and requires substantial efforts. Rinsing electrical insulators by electrified water is typically too expensive. Moreover, cleaning by manual effort or by machine is not possible in some application or locations of insulators because of geographic barriers or other factors which affect access to the insulators. Removal of dirt on insulators should be done promptly, regardless of the method employed, to avoid the generation of sparking or arcing which can frequently happen in electric systems with dirty insulators.
Accordingly, there has been a need to provide improved methods and apparatus for cleaning insulators of electric systems.